


Loneliness Percentage

by astrangerenters



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:23:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters/pseuds/astrangerenters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d been surprised to get the call from Jun so late. He’d laughed and said that Sho was person number eight, and at that point, he wasn’t even going to bother going out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loneliness Percentage

It’s already after midnight when Sho gets to Jun’s apartment building, but he can smell take-out food as soon as the door opens. It’s rather unlike him. Even now that his drama has started filming, Jun’s still usually in favor of cooking something for himself quickly than getting something delivered.

Jun’s got his hair tied back and still has his cheap wooden take-out chopsticks in his free hand. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Sho says back, hearing the hum of Jun’s air conditioning as he steps inside and closes the door.

“You can lock it,” Jun says, almost absent-mindedly as he stumbles back around the corner, leaving Sho alone in the entryway.

So this was how it was going to be. Jun had been laughing when he’d called before, and Sho hadn’t thought it to be anything but a jovial kind of laughter. Well, Jun has always been hard to read. Sho diligently locks the door and slides out of his shoes.

Jun’s apartment has always been sparsely furnished, even though he’s lived here for a few years now. Jun has a lot of things, but he doesn’t have a lot of clutter. The closets have boxes with labels, things that Jun’s acquired but hasn’t really had the time to put out or display. Everything has a place and the end result is that the apartment doesn’t look lived in.

He turns the corner and sees that Jun’s got his take-out box on the table and an empty wine bottle. Sho goes straight to the kitchen and opens the fridge, pulling out the pitcher of water with the expensive filter on it that Jun’s been bragging about in the green room lately.

“Order anything good?” Sho calls, pouring two glasses of water.

“Thai!”

“Thai,” Sho repeats to himself, setting the pitcher back inside the refrigerator. Jun doesn’t even make a face when he hands him the water. Jun’s sofa is comfortable - built for three, maybe four if holding narrow people. Sho sits at the end and Jun’s sprawled across the rest of it.

Sho will wait until Jun goes to bed before he picks up the take-out, rinses out the wine glass and sets it in the dishwasher. And Jun will wake up in the morning and think that he’d done it himself. He’ll be quite pleased with himself too, and the thought of it nearly makes Sho snort into his glass of water.

Jun’s not really paying attention to his TV. He’s got his glasses on, but they’re perched at the end of his nose as he brings the water to his lips. Sho clears his throat. “So how is Takeuchi-san?”

“Wonderful.”

“Nino will be glad to hear it.”

Jun shrugs. “I was thinking of telling him that she’s difficult to work with. You know, just to shatter the image he’s got.” Jun looks at him over the rims of his glasses. “That’s mean, isn’t it?”

Sho nods. “Yep.” He grabs the remote for the TV, turning the volume down a little. “Definitely mean. Want me to draft the mail to him?”

That gets a chuckle out of Jun. “Partner in crime, good idea. He won’t expend the energy to kill us both.”

The thought of Nino on set in Kyoto, crying his heart out about a ‘Takeuchi Yuko is not the perfect woman’ mail message is enough to leave them both laughing, hard enough that Sho has to set down his water glass before he spills on himself.

When they finally calm down a bit, Jun nudges Sho’s thigh with his foot. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Sho says again, feeling a not unwelcome rush of warmth speed through him.

“I didn’t take you away from anything, did I?” Jun asks, always seeming to think that people would rather be anywhere than in his company. He just has bad luck with off nights and a tendency to let it get to him. And it wasn’t like anyone could stay up until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning talking the way Jun could. It was just something Jun didn’t seem to realize about most people.

“Not really,” Sho says.

Sure, he’d been surprised to get the call from Jun so late. He’d laughed and said that Sho was person number eight, and at that point, he wasn’t even going to bother going out. Did Sho want to come over?

“Not really?”

He shakes his head. “Friends from university. They’ve got steady schedules. Everyone was getting ready to head home anyway.” He digs around in his pocket and pulls out the bar napkin with the date scribbled on it. “Another wedding, tentative date.”

Jun sighs, leaning back against one of his extra pillows. “Everyone you know is getting married.”

“And it’s costing me, believe me,” he shoots back, already thinking of yet another envelope full of money he’ll be dropping off in several months, trying to find at least an hour or two to show his face at the reception.

They drop the marriage subject before it becomes a sore one. They get it enough in interviews and for magazines lately. It’s a question Ohno and Nino can answer in a sentence. “It’s not something I think about.” Aiba always makes a face, laughs and says his own garbled version of “it’s not something I think about.” But he and Jun are the ones who think and consider and overanalyze.

“We can still go out,” Sho offers, heart not really in it. Jun has filming tomorrow from mid-afternoon until some god-forsaken early morning hour; he’s got his own things to do starting from mid-morning.

“I shouldn’t have said you were the eighth person I called,” Jun admits. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you,” Sho tells him immediately.

Jun smiles, his eyes a little shiny from a whole bottle of wine. “You’re mad that you were eighth.”

He hasn’t been good at lying to Jun. Not lately when they’ve been hanging out together, never in the years before. The television’s a blur of high-definition color, a commercial for beer. “Maybe.”

The couch cushions stretch and adjust as Jun sits up and scoots over, elbow balancing just behind Sho’s head. Jun’s drunk, he reminds himself, eyes meeting the bottle and the food mess on the table. The wine will make him drowsy soon enough.

“Remember after the concert?” Jun asks him, fingers slightly cold against the nape of Sho’s neck. Arriving separately, leaving separately. Arriving again at Jun’s apartment building. Separately.

“Sure.”

Jun’s other hand finds Sho’s arm, tracing a sloppy figure eight with his thumb on the inside of his wrist. He feels goosebumps starting up and down his skin as Jun’s thumb skims and scrapes over the faint blue veins. He may be eighth on Jun’s call list, but that’s only because there’s certain things they choose not to admit, at least not out loud.

Sho lets him take his glasses off and then meets Jun’s mouth halfway, enjoying the languid, teasing way Jun kisses when he’s drunk. He’s less aggressive, not really looking for a challenge. He’s not trying to prove anything to Sho, and it’s kind of a relief. There’s the lingering taste of Jun’s dinner, although it’s Jun so there’s no sriracha or anything particularly unpleasant or spicy.

Jun’s fingers are still plucking at his wrist, moving up the inside of his forearm. He can’t help humming a bit in appreciation, moving his own hand to Jun’s thigh, feeling the heat of his skin through the thin pajama bottoms he’s wearing. Sho’s feeling a little intoxicated by proxy, and he doesn’t have the time he had that night after the concert.

He’s a little pleased by the look of disappointment in Jun’s face when he breaks their lips’ contact, scratching at his scalp to try and ground himself a bit. “You should sleep.”

Jun pouts, letting him go. “I’ll be fine.”

Bottle of wine on his own isn’t fine, but Sho’s got enough bad habits of his own that he’s in no place to judge Jun’s behavior. He gets up, offering a hand that Jun begrudgingly accepts. He pulls Jun along to the bedroom, reminding himself again and again that he can’t stay, not tonight.

Jun flops down on his bed with very little grace. “You’re drinking another glass of water before you sleep,” Sho tells him, fetching the glass from the living room and filling it in Jun’s bathroom. Jun doesn’t bother to throw a fit about it being from the tap and not his precious filter. One of the benefits of him being intoxicated, Sho figures.

“You’re going to watch?” Jun asks, sitting up and taking the glass from his hand, ensuring that their fingers brush. “That make you hot?”

He’s just teasing, Sho reminds himself, but he keeps his distance. Jun’s pajama bottoms are slung low and his t-shirt’s riding up, and Sho knows he can’t stay. “Drink it or I’ll find your script and hide it.”

Jun rolls his eyes but still obeys, downing the whole glass before offering it up for Sho to take. “I don’t get hangovers from wine.”

Sho’s got half a dozen stories to prove that Jun’s lying, but he keeps his mouth shut. He’s halfway to the bedroom door when he realizes that if Jun’s in bed, there’s nobody to lock the door after he leaves. Not like anyone’s going to break in, but it sets Sho’s mind wandering in a bunch of uncomfortable directions. It would be easier if he had his own key, but that means something that neither he nor Jun are ready for.

Jun’s already spread out, limbs in every direction, and Sho sighs. He was so preoccupied with not spending the night with Jun that now he has to spend the night with Jun. He heads for the hall and makes sure the door’s bolted. He dutifully cleans up Jun’s mess, gets the leftovers in the fridge and gets the glasses in the dishwasher.

He turns the lights off and heads back for the bedroom. Somehow, Jun’s left him just enough room. He sets the alarm on his cell phone, setting it down on the nightstand and goes through a drawer to find a spare pair of pajama pants. Jun will have a comment about that in the morning. He strips out of his jeans and t-shirt, pulling the borrowed pants over his boxers and hits the light switch.

As soon as he’s settled under Jun’s covers, feeling the cool air from the vent overhead, he realizes this is probably what Jun wanted all along. He’ll probably wake up with Jun wrapped all around him, which Jun will later deny since of course, he would never do such a thing.

Sho yawns. “Good night, Macchan.”

He can hear Jun snickering a little. Sho doubts that numbers one through seven would have ended up here in Jun’s bed anyhow. He’s content enough to be number eight on the call list and number one in other things.

He closes his eyes and lets sleep take him.


End file.
